Report: Iran Illicitly Financing War in Yemen Using German Companies

{Germany’s dealings with Iran is having a direct impact on stability in the Middle East. – LS}

The Islamic Republic of Iran is using German companies to disguise their illicit support for Shiite militia forces in the fight against the internationally recognized government of Yemen, Benjamin Weinthal reported in The Jerusalem Post on Friday.

Based on interviews with U.S. Treasury Department officials, Time Magazine revealed last week that, “The IRGC had then printed counterfeit Yemeni banknotes potentially worth hundreds of millions of dollars and used the bogus rials to fund its proxy war against the beleaguered pro-US government in the capital of Sanaa. German companies were being used as a cover by the Iranians to finance the world’s worst humanitarian conflict.”

Time added: “For several years, Iran’s elite Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) had been using German front companies to buy advanced printing machinery, watermarked paper and specialty inks in violation of European export controls.”

The Jerusalem Post previously reported on German intelligence reports, which revealed extensive links between the Islamic Republic and German-based companies, including using front companies to engage in illicit procurement of nuclear and missile technology in Germany during 2017. A German intelligence report from the city-state of Hamburg charged in July that Iran’s regime is continuing to seek weapons of mass destruction.

According to Time: “The evidence, uncovered by U.S. illicit-finance investigators, was meant to sway the Germans, but not just in hopes of countering Iran’s moves on the southern tip of the Arabian Peninsula” but also “to convince Berlin that Tehran cannot be trusted and that the Germans should join the Trump Administration in imposing economy-crippling sanctions on Iran.”

Iran’s official IRNA news agency reported on Monday that Germany’s Ambassador to Iran Michael Klor-Berchtold told an Iranian official that Germany opposes the U.S. withdrawal from the nuclear deal.

The report charged that U.S. officials involved in the operation met with their German counterparts at the Federal Ministry of Finance in Berlin last April. Weeks after the meeting took place, “American officials presented their hosts with one last set of documents: detailed blueprints on how the Trump Administration was preparing to unleash financial warfare on the Iranian economy.”

The Trump administration designated the IRGC a terrorist organization in October. A U.S. State Department spokesman said in March that the U.S. expects the Europeans to “cut off funding to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps [IRGC], its militant proxies, and anyone else who contributes to Iran’s support for terrorism.”